The adventures of southern gardeners starting over in New England

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In Virginia, mister gardener nourished us all summer with the freshest vegetables and fruits from his garden… a true slow food movement in our own backyard. He was also the main chef so the vegetables and fruits he harvested would go straight into the meals he prepared.

That was then and this is now. He is still the main chef but we have downsized from 12-acres to a small property. mister gardener’s vegetables are now grown in pots and herbs are grown in my flower beds. No room for a vegetable garden, so what do we do? We support the slow food movement at our wonderful Exeter Farmers’ Market, the 2nd largest in the state, where we get to know our local farmers.

We always enjoy the live music and bustling marketplace where we chat with farmers and craftspeople, meet our friends and neighbors while shopping for an abundance of local foods and produce. The quality of 100% locally grown produce cannot be equaled and it’s a good feeling to support local agriculture.

We are awed by the fresh veggies, fruits, meats, cheeses, eggs, honey, syrup, beer, baked goods, herbs and other plants, and numerous crafts… and stimulating the senses are savory meals served up hot and yummy.

Here are a few scenes from our most recent market. Click to enlarge photos.

From their website, here is who will be here for Exeter’s Farmers’ Market this week. See you there!

Spring officially arrives in a matter of days but it certainly doesn’t feel like it. With snow still piled high outside our door, we sought refuge at the Wentworth Greenhouses Farmers’ Market where local farmers have been toiling straight through the harshness of winter to bring their wares to market. We were thankful for a rare sunny day that warmed the greenhouses and brought us all out of hibernation.

There is something special about meeting the farmers and bakers and venders (and often their families) to say thank-you for bringing us the freshest of local wares. We usually visit vegetable stands first and stock up.

Click on photos to enlarge.

carrots

apples

pickled turnips

lettuce

potatoes

This is a new one for me!

onions

Baked goods were too delicious to pass up and on the way to being sold out. The breads from Sunnyfield Bakery were a hit and, yes, we took home our share.

Bread

Sunnyfield Bakery

Sweets!

coconut cardamom date tart

From soap to wool to rugs, beer and preserves, to cheeses and meats, the variety and quality of merchandise is always marvelous!

I get a little giddy when Thursdays roll around. The Exeter Farmers’ Market, the second largest on New Hampshire’s seacoast, is just a stone’s throw from us. It is a carnival of sights, sounds, people, and aromas from fruits and vegetables, meats and seafood, cheeses, maple syrup products, soaps, baked goods and lovely decorative arts right along the beautiful Squamscott River. It’s a party and we’ve had a summer of fun but the outdoor market season is coming to a close this week.

We are sad about the outdoor farmers’ market ending, but we were thrilled to recently discover a smaller party to attend. It may be compact but it’s roadside retailing at its best. Close enough for us to arrive on foot is a new farm stand with delectable goodies that mister gardener can not resist. We’ve stocked up on tomatoes. We tried the apple cider. Organic eggs are beautiful. Pies are delicious. Heck, the bread is always sold out before we arrive but we’ll try to get there earlier.

Today, under cloudless blue skies, temperatures in the mid-70’s, we mingled with the crowds at our Exeter’s Farmers’ Market. All mister gardener needed were cucumbers for tonight’s Greek Salad and I was in the market for eggplant after seeing Diary of a Tomato’s Roasted Ratatouille, but it didn’t end there. Late season fruits and vegetables in a rainbow of colors were plentiful and tempting. We tried to meander and simply ‘oooo and ahhhh’ but it was the samples that won us over. After tasting a tidbit here and there, the temptation was too much. We came home with three bags full.

They are the most delicious and most versatile fruit of the season. During the tomato season, either cooked or raw, tomatoes are a perfect accompaniment to any meal at our house. Whether raw in a salad or sandwich, roasted, in a sauce, on a pizza, in soups, stuffed, or in tarts, pies and even preserves, we can eat tomatoes for breakfast, lunch, appetizers, dinner and snacks. There are as many tomato recipes as there are varieties of tomatoes.

In Virginia, mister gardener grew 18 different varieties of the fruit. He depended on the tried-and-trues and experimented with the heirlooms and the unknowns. It was great fun to see and taste the differences. We had purple tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, orange tomatoes, speckled tomatoes, and some shaped like pears! There are no tomatoes in our New Hampshire garden. Instead we can select good variety from what is offered at local farmers’ markets.

One of our favorite meals is mister gardener’s fresh gazpacho soup. With newly picked young cucumbers, onions and green peppers from farmers’ markets, mister gardener makes a large quantity of gazpacho to last us a few days and enough to share with family. Life would definitely be better if the fleeting tomato season would never end!

The Exeter Farmers’ Market is in full swing. It’s a great place to stroll, chat with other shoppers, get to know your farmers, and get to know your food. Today mister gardener had potatoes and chicken on his shopping list. I had herbs.

But it’s hard to stick to your shopping list when we find things like this:

We’ve been waiting for the Wentworth Greenhouses to kick off the Winter Farmers’ Market because we were in the market for fresh cut Brussels sprouts for our Thanksgiving table. The Thanksgiving menu has been planned. We’ve pre-ordered our turkey, our Edwards Virginia ham is on the way, and now we need our vegetables. We’ve come to the right place……

I was startled by the first person I encountered as I crossed the parking lot. He was a jolly old fella who laughed when I asked for his photo. The Christmas Season was definitely not on my mind today…. but, hey, St. Nick must celebrate Thanksgiving, too. He had a big bag of produce that he carefully loaded into his sleigh…. errr….trunk.

Farmers’ Markets are still somewhat new to me. At the entrance, I surveyed the marketplace. The scene reminded me a little of the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The area was packed with hustle, bustle, buying and selling, but there was a big difference here. There were no agitated, impatient, loud folks in this room. Shoppers of all ages, adults and children, sampled wares, stood patiently in line, mingled, laughed and chatted with the growers. Sights, earthy aromas, and textures permeated the throughout. Everyone was having fun.

No, I did not sample the raw goat milk but I couldn’t pass up the goat milk soap!

The sign with the pastas listed such amazing flavors as herb pappardelle, spinach fettuccine, garlic scapes linguine, lemon basil linguine, potato chives casarecci, squid ink spaghettini and more. I would like to sample them all.

So after mingling, sampling, buying, connecting with the growers and admiring their wares for over an hour, we purchased our fresh Brussels sprouts and made our way to the car. Thank you to Wentworth Greenhouses and Seacoast Eat Local for providing fresh from the farms for local folks and a day’s entertainment…. of foods, crafts and rooms full of festive Christmas plants and adornments. I swooned over the glorious winterberry (Ilex verticillata), my favorite holiday trimming.

My California Dreamin’ sister is visiting New England and I’m pretty excited. Her plane has landed and she’s on her way. Greeting her at noon will be a familiar edible from our past. Our mother loved tomato jam and since the tomatoes at local farmers’ markets are at the peak of perfection, I decided to cook up a little surprise last night. It’s fun to browse through favorite tomato jam recipes online, but all I really needed for our favorite recipe were three main ingredients: tomatoes, lemons, sugar.

I’ve made the jam using peeled tomatoes but much prefer the consistency of jam made from unpeeled tomatoes. Just coarsely chop the tomatoes and toss them in a pot.

After squeezing the juice from the lemons into the tomatoes, I toss in a few lemon slices. It adds a little bite to the taste.

I can’t wait to see sis’ face when she walks in the door. It’ll be any moment now. Chicken salad with a dollop of homemade tomato jam… just like mama made. How divine!

Easter morning was spent browsing the wide variety and kaleidoscopic colors of fruits and vegetables at a neighborhood Farmer’s Market. Just wandering from booth to booth was a visual circus for the senses. A photo sampling of our adventure is much more desirable than words. We hope to see some of these wonderful vegetables in our own New Hampshire gardens before too long!

We just arrived home from the Winter Farmers’ Market in Rollingsford NH. It was an indescribable experience so I’ll say it mostly with pictures.

Days are growing longer by almost 3 minutes a day, one of the farmers told me. Did you know that winter greens thrive on these lengthening days? We found plenty of greens at the market, such as different kales, lettuces, bok choy, and beet greens. We found carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic, and winter squash galore. There were also rudabagas and beets.

The mother and daughter team selling at this booth were bee keepers and vegetable growers. It is mainly a one woman operation with help from her daughter when she is home from school. This farmer said she worked from 9 am to 9 pm harvesting vegetables yesterday. We bought her honey.

I didn’t expect so much meat to be available. They offered organic beef, pork, chicken, and lamb. Yes, mister gardener could not pass up the pork spare ribs and a few strip steaks.

Did you know that beans are one of the world’s oldest foods? I’d never seen such variety. Have you ever heard of Marfax, True Red Cranberry, or Yellow Eye beans? These beans are a lot fresher than the ones in the grocery store that could be years old.

Lengthening daylight also brings an abundance of eggs. Locally raised eggs are amazing, full of flavor and nutrition. The farmers were quick to tell me their chickens are treated humanely. I thought the colors of the eggs were gorgeous.

The eggs we ended up buying were quail eggs. This farmer raises 3 varieties of quail and was excited to talk about each. I wonder which one laid my eggs.

We evidenced cookies, doughnuts, granola (tasty samples). We could have had breakfast or lunch of cheeses, pastas, crepes, soup, milk, yogurt and a breakfast sandwich that looked hot and delicious. We settled on crepes…. savory with organic cheeses and herbs for mister gardener and, alas, Nutella for me.

There were many bread bakers and we love bread. We choose some whole wheat yeast rolls for dinner tonight.

Author Kathy Gunst was cooking up a storm and serving samples of several different recipes from her newest cookbook. Mister gardener loved the roasted root vegetable and lettuce salad but this bean dish was delicious, too.

Rugs, slippers, blankets, mittens, hand-dyed wool was all prepared by this happy farmer. She loves her craft and it shows.

Finally, we stopped to enjoy the music of MiKe & MiKe who now have Lily Hope sleeping through the entire show. Mike Morris, guitarist and Heather Mike, fiddler, entertained the crowds with foot stomping high-energy folk music. What a treat!

We all love our farmers markets and we’re delighted to have an area market, the Williamsburg Farmers Market, voted as one of the top 3 medium-sized markets in the nation by their patrons in an American Farmland Trust contest. According to a recent New York Times article, there may be a glut of farmers markets in parts of the country and profits are shrinking as markets compete. Are they reaching a saturation point? Farmers markets in America grew by 17% in 2010 according to Bloomberg Business Week and have tripled since the mid-90’s according to the USDA. The New York Times states that 1,043 markets were established this year alone.

The glut may be more acute in larger populated areas like Seattle and San Francisco, perhaps with a marketing technique of a coffee shop on every corner. In Gloucester county, there are two official farmers markets and a number of other individual markets along our country roads touting vegetables, fruits, jellies and fresh-baked goods. To top it off, we now have Walmart vowing to double sales of locally grown produce. In Gloucester, they are carrying locally grown melons.

All this may be good for the customer who is looking for the best, the freshest, organically grown produce but what does this say about the future of farmers markets? Have the number of farmers markets outpaced demand? What do you think? Perhaps only the farmers can say for sure.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain